My high school years, 48 to 51, we lived in a small town with no running water but an abundant town pump. It was in the middle of the town between the Bunyai's house, the telephone operator, and Michalicz garage and it was the water source for all the townsfolk. The pump didn't supply, surprisingly, heated water, so we heated it in the copper boiler on the wood stove in the kitchen on Saturday night and all five of us bathed in the tub, mother first: me last: feminism unleashed. Philip said , " We all peed in it before Jim bathed. " I am mindful of the doom saying of Chicken Little concerning Canadian water shortages looming and what are we going to do when it happens as I look at Saskatchewan in those years with our reliance on rain for our gardens--- 20 inches a year --- and the town pump. Because we lived in the CNR railroad station we could melt snow in the copper boiler in the winter instead of going to the town pump but I was lazy and usually got the snow too close to the tracks so it always had some cinders in it from the steam engines coal burning and it was uncomfortable for the bathers. At least it was meager justification for me since it was quid pro quo for having to bath last. My Strata council colleagues are counseling drastic water use reductions at this time and I may sympathize with them but I am going to bath and luxuriate in the hot soapy water frequently since I now have heated running water without cinders, at least for a little time.

As he said, " I yam what I yam." I'm not sure he knew what he was, as if any of us do. He was beset by Bluto, a big hairy bully, and had the job of protecting Olive Oyl, but Popeye may not have known that his internal dark side was Bluto and his anima was Olive. I yam what I yam is pretty complicated stuff. Our nameless God says just, "I AM", and Descartes says, " I think, therefore I am." , but Popeye the sailor man is an equal challenge for us. Moreover he has to rely on strength from outside his skin because he cannot battle his big hairy bully or protect his anima without a can or two of spinach. And so do we, as we find out, usually painfully, that we need a tonic of spinach from time to time when Bluto appears or Olive is threatened, usually both. I may say, I am what I am, but wholeness is an elusive state and includes Bluto and Olive and the great I AM, Who is the giver of Spinach.